Head of government is the chief officer of the executive branch of a government, often presiding over a cabinet. In a parliamentary system, the head of government is often styled prime minister, chief minister, premier, etc. In presidential republics or absolute monarchies, the head of government may be the same person as the head of state, who is often also called a president or a monarch.
In semi-presidential systems, the Head of Government may answer to both the Head of State and the legislative power (such as parliament). An example is the French Fifth Republic (1958–present), where the Président de la République appoints a Prime Minister but must choose someone who can get government business through, and has the support of, the National Assembly. When the opposition controls the National Assembly (and thus government funding and most legislation), the President is in effect forced to choose a Prime Minister from the opposition; in such cases, known as cohabitation, the government controls internal state policy, with the President restricted largely to foreign affairs.
Read more about Head Of Government: Titles of Respective Heads of Government, Parliamentary Heads of Government, Official Residence
Famous quotes containing the words head of, head and/or government:
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Your head was
radiant in its emptiness,
a small clean room.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)